George's own style is said to be the perfection of nervousness and vervousness. He is a genius, he admits it. I am proud, but not glad, for it cuts both ways, and it is hardly likely that there will be two following after each other so soon in the same family. Though one never knows? Mozart's father was a musical man. George says that to be daughter to such a person is a liberal education; it seems about all the education I am likely to get! George teaches me Greek and Latin, when he has time. He won't touch Ariadne, for she isn't worth it. He says I am apt. Dear me, one may as well make lessons a pleasure, instead of a scene! Ariadne cried the first time at Perspective, when George, after a long explanation that puzzled her, asked her in that particular, sniffy, dried-up tone teachers put on,--"Did she see?" And when he asked me, I didn't see either, but I said I did, to prevent unpleasantness. I do not know why I am called Tempe. Short for temper, the new cook says, but when I asked George, he laughed, and bid me and the cook beware of obvious derivations. It appears that there is a pretty place somewhere in Greece called the Vale of Tempe, and that I am named after that, surely a mistake. My father calls me a devil--plain devil when he is cross, little devil when he is pleased. I take it as a compliment, for look at my sister Ariadne, she is as good as gold, and what does she get by it? She does not contradict or ask questions or bother anybody, but reads poetry and does her hair different ways all day long. She never says a sharp word--can't! George says she is bound to get left, like the first Ariadne was. She is long and pale and thin, and white like a snowdrop, except for her reddish hair. The pert hepatica is my favourite flower. It comes straight out of the ground, like me, without any fuss or preparation in the way of leaves and trimmings. I know that I am not ugly. I know it by the art of deduction. We none of us are, or we should not have been allowed to survive. George would never have condescended to own ugly children. We should have been exposed when we were babies on Primrose Hill, which is, I suppose, the tantamount of Mount Täygetus, as the ancient Greeks did their ugly babies. We aren't allowed to read Lemprière. I do. What brutes those Greeks were, and did not even know one colour from the other, so George says! I am right in saying we are all tolerable. The annoying thing is that the new cook, who knows what she is talking about, says that children "go in and out so," and even Aunt Gerty says that "fancy children never last," and after all this, I feel that the pretty ones can never count on keeping up to their own standard.